Cheerio, mate.

The small rings have gone from a curiosity to something that is worth keeping in the mouth. Yep, she's now eating the cheerios instead of just playing with them and occasionally putting one in her mouth, only to get a funny look on her face as she spits them out. Now she's eating them. This is her first solid food.

However, she does not appear to be a picky eater in general, she's now had peas, carrots, green beans, apples, bananas, apricots, squash and sweet potatoes. She's enjoyed some more than others, but she seems to like the variety of foods and really hasn't yet objected to anything we've sent her way. An interesting thing I learned is that you wait several days between introducing new foods so that if they do have a reaction, you can identify which food caused it. The first food we introduced was peas and it did give her problems. We later read that it's not a good first food -- why does Gerber include them in the stage 1 foods? -- because it can produce an allergic reaction. We later tried peas again and this time there was no adverse reactions.

Life of the Party

Had dinner tonight with some friends. One is one of my bosses. His wife is a former colleague of mine -- he was her boss before they decided to tie the knot. Then she had to quit.

Anyhow, this isn't really about them, because we all know who this is about. Tonight was another award-winning night for Rachel. For the first time ever, she endured several short stints in the pen..er, playard.. without complaining. She sat with us during the entire meal in her highchair and behaved herself. As we ate Lori and I took turns feeding her. She was an ultimate delight to have around and really impressed us and them.

They aren't sure yet if they want to have kids. Originally he did, but now he's not so sure. She hasn't warmed up to the idea yet, one of her concerns being the number of children out there without parents waiting for adoptions. He also mentioned a family who came to have dinner with them and brought their two kids who weren't behaving well that night. He wasn't faulting them, just alluding to how much of a challenge that seemed like.

But Rachel was just downright impressive tonight. I needed to write this down because I know there will be nights not like this one and it will be good for me to come back and read this. (So, Rachel, if you are reading this, I owe you another $5, unless you just used a search engine to find all the times I said I owed you money.)

Mine!

The past two days when we've left Rachel at school, immediately this little 5-month old show off creeps and crawls right over to her and puts his hands on the toy she's playing with. The first day, I picked up the little bugger, turned him around and gave him his own toy to play with, but he went back to bugging her. (At work they said "Ah, look, dad already fighting off the boys!")

Yesterday, the toy had a handle on it and when he came over and put his hands on the toy, she just lifted it up with one hand so that he couldn't reach it. She lowered it and he reached right over, so she started pushing on his face and when that didn't deter him, she started going whack whack whack on his face. It wasn't hard, I don't think, but it was sure funny to watch. He started crying, but didn't move away. Another caregiver had been watching the entire interaction and moved in at that point to scoop him up and away.

I know we won't encourage our child to fight, but it is exciting to see the mind work as she determines how best to fend for herself. It wasn't that exciting a toy, but it was clear that the little boy only was interested in it because she was playing with it.

In other news, Rachel got her first valentine. Surprisingly, it was from Robert and not Nicholas. I wish we were parents who were cool enough to have stuff like that occur to us... at Christmastime she got a gift from another student. Makes me feel like an unthoughtful parent that we didn't think to give gifts or valentines.

In other other news, Leticia has decided that our kitchen is unsafe for Rachel. We came home to find that in the course of her every-other-week cleaning she had moved all of the cleaning supplies from under the sink in the kitchen to a cabinet high off the ground. (The kitchen cabinets are not secured, though the room is blocked by a baby gate.)

Stand in the place where you live...

Rachel's pulling herself to standing whenever she can. Balance is not entirely there yet and sometimes she topples, but she enjoys standing, especially at her LeapFrog activity table, and anywhere she can find a laundry basket. We have to weigh down the basket, but she loves walking along the edge and transferring from one basket to another.

Beautiful Day

Has it really been that long since we've posted? A few days ago was my birthday. I decided that what I wanted to do was take the day off from work and go up to Santa Barbara. So I asked Lori if she could get the day off. She was able to. Funny thing is, when we announced our plans, people individually at our two work places asked "What will you do with Rachel for the day?"

I was a little stunned, a little saddened and a little annoyed by that question and I think it struck Lori as being odd as well.

D-freaking-uh. She's coming with us on the trip, we told them.

I mean, what's the point of going somewhere nice if I can't go with my entire family? What, we should put her in daycare while we away to some relaxing locale? Granted, there is a time and a place for mommy and daddy alone time, but a birthday away is certainly not that time.

We got up in a leisurely fashion, had a great breakfast of french toast sticks and fruit, enjoyed the morning sunshine. Longer than expected, but we didn't get on the road until 1. We got there pretty quickly and spent several hours just walking around the pier and street along the water, had some ice cream, watched a seal beg for food in the water and a giant albatross beg for food on the pier. We had a sub-par dinner at a fancy restaurant on the pier (avoid Moby Dick... overpriced and underwhelming food... nice atmosphere and good wait staff), walked some more and then headed home. It was after dark, but we just missed rush hour, so traffic was again fantastic. Cake and presents and it was time to get ready for bed so we could get up and return to the grind.

Rachel had a great time. Slept for the entire drive up, enjoyed her time in the stroller, enjoyed being carried, seeing all the people, the water, people's pets and the giant albatross. Pictures are on actual film since no one on the pier had batteries for our digital camera (D'oh), so it may be awhile before they are scanned. She slept through dinner and slept again for the drive down. The only time she seemed annoyed was when the sun was really bright... she kept burying her head in our shoulder only to pick it back up again to look around and then realize it was too bright and hide again.